Embers are Red, Ice is Blue, a star wars fanfic

Embers Are Red, Ice Is Blue

I get the feeling that nothing escapes your notice.

A momentary glance slices through me and fire

Slips out of your eyes, searing me; my chest

Heaves in fear, in something else, something pure,

Undiluted something, and maybe if I knew what,

You'd look again and realize I exist.

Or am I pining for someone who doesn't exist?

I paint this picture in my head; would I even notice

If you blew apart like smoke from a dying fire?

I've been playing my hand close to my chest,

But maybe I should just fold. This run of pure

Bad luck has worn me down, and I can't imagine what

It's been like for you. But you always know what

To do, pushing forward, confident a bright future exists.

You draw my eye with a gesture, making me notice

Your faint smile, your tilted head, your eyes gleaming like a fire

Now reduced to embers. Fingers steepled before your chest

And all I can think of is snow, ice and snow, cold, pure

And freezing me from the inside out, sealing me in the purity

Of ice, of carbonite, of I don't know what

Would you even tell me if you knew I existed?

I'm below your station anyway, beneath your notice.

They say bitter cold burns; is it a winter storm or fire

That consumes you, that takes up that space in your chest?

A vise holds me, a slowly mounting pressure on my chest

Because I fear there's no room for me in your heart; the purity

Of your purpose, of striving toward far-reaching goals is what

You love more than anything else, your raison d'être.

But if you ever find room for a lesser love, please give me notice;

Your unexpected touch would brand me worse than fire.

A glance from you, a single meaningful word sets me afire;

Your regard is a knife, a shard of ice in my chest.

I turn, melt like spring, drowning in this breathless purity.

The heat of you thaws, then burns, consumes. What

Did I do differently this time? You affirm my existence,

But when I draw your eye, what escapes your notice?

Red blossoms on your chest, redder than any fire.

If this agony isn't purity, I don't want to know what is.

I kneel, promise never to notice that you don't exist.

I used the sestina form for this poem, which has six ending words reused in a pattern from stanza to stanza instead of rhyme. The last stanza, the envoi, gathers up the ending words and deploys them for the final time. The dots between stanzas are because ffnet didn't want to cooperate with my original formatting. (grr!)